Helen Briggs
Environment Correspondent in Glasgow

Image source, Reuters

Nations facing the most severe impacts of climate change have been vocal even in the opening hours of the conference.

Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley delivered a stark warning on the effects of an increase in global temperatures on island nations like hers due to rising sea levels and more extreme weather.

1.5C, she told fellow leaders, "is what we need to survive", while "two degrees is a death sentence".

"We don't want that death sentence and we have come here today to say 'try harder'."

She pointed out that during the Covid pandemic central banks managed to find $9tn (£6.6tn) to pump into the global economy and said $500bn a year for 20 years could be put into a trust to finance the transition.

She said the failure of rich nations to come up with the full climate finance promised for those living on the frontline of climate change could be measured in “lives and livelihoods” and that this was "immoral and unjust".

The issue of climate justice will be key to whether the Glasgow talks succeed or fail.

Sir David continues his speech with this - a more optimistic note.

He says we know how to stop the concentration of carbon rising and to keep a 1.5C temperature rise within reach.

And he says we will all share in the benefits of affordable energy and clean air, with nature as our ally, recapturing carbon where we let it.

He tells world leaders that young people and future generations will judge them on one thing: whether they made the concentration of carbon in the atmosphere fall.

Georgina Rannard
BBC News

“An eruption of despair and frustration”.

This is what Caroline Hickman, a psychologist at the University of Bath and with the Climate Psychology Alliance, thinks will be a common reaction from the public to COP26.

Anxiety and fear are not uncommon as we read about climate change and live through its growing impact. But landmark global meetings and messages like “this is our last chance” can ramp up those feelings of powerlessness.

"These leaders have our fate in their hands, which isn’t exactly comforting,” Hickman explains.

Validating those feelings is essential, she says. “Whatever you’re feeling is OK. If you’re feeling despair or rage or optimism, that’s all OK.”

So what can we do?

• Resilience: Hickman says don't collapse into apocalyptic thinking or naïve hope that all will be fine. Be realistic about climate change but believe things can change
• Don't switch off the news: Don't shut down completely to block out negative feelings, because when you "wake up" the reality will be too extreme
• Keep perspective: It's OK to feel anxious about COP - but that doesn't mean you have to feel terrible about everything else

Image source, Reuters

Next after Prince Charles, is the broadcaster and naturalist Sir David Attenborough.

As he speaks about how our relationship with the Earth is defined by a single number - the concentration of carbon in the atmosphere - a graph charts its movements over thousands of years.

Sir David says that when it bounced wildly and global temperatures fluctuated, it was a "brutal an unpredictable world" in which our ancestors could only exist in tiny numbers at times.

Then it stabilised and the climate became benign, not varying by more than plus or minus one degree. "Everything we’ve achieved in the last 10,000 years was enabled by the stability in this time," he says.

The burning of fossil fuels and other industrial activities jeopardises all this, he says. "We are already in trouble, the stability we all depend on is breaking," Sir David says.

"This story is one of inequality as well as instability. Those who’ve done the least to cause this problem are being the hardest hit."

Image source, Reuters

After a short film, Prince Charles is the next speaker.

He says that the Covid pandemic has shown "just how devastating" cross-border crises can be.

The Prince of Wales says that "time has quite literally run out" and says "we know what we must do".

"We have to reduce emissions urgently and take action to tackle the carbon already in the atmosphere," he says, going on to say that putting a value on carbon to make carbon capture solutions more economical is "absolutely critical".

The heir to the throne says that to help countries burdened by growing levels of debt we "need a vast military style campaign to marshal the strength of the global private sector".

He adds that "the cost of inaction is far greater than cost of prevention".

Choose to save humanity, delegates toldpublished at 13:14 Greenwich Mean Time 1 November 2021

13:14 GMT 1 November 2021

Matt McGrath
Environment correspondent

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has really embraced climate change as the defining issue of his tenure.

His speeches have perhaps been the strongest public advocacy for urgent action on cutting emissions.

His remarks to the leader’s summit here in Glasgow were very much in that vein.

Fossil fuels were pushing humanity to the brink, he said.

The world faced a stark choice - we stop it, or it stops us.

Guterres said the belief that recent announcements from countries to cut carbon would turn things around was “an illusion”.

He said that at the end of this COP, if the world wasn’t on track then countries should come back with updated plans every year - and not every five years as is currently the case.

And perhaps channelling the movie, Trainspotting, Mr Guterres finished with an Irvine Welsh-like flourish.

“Choose ambition, choose solidarity, choose to safeguard our future and save humanity,” he said.

Matt McGrath has been covering climate change for the past 15 years, reporting from 10 COPs along the way.

Image source, Reuters

United Nations Secretary General António Guterres reinforces his reputation as being one of the loudest advocates for urgent action on cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

He tells the conference that "our addiction to fossil fuels is pushing humanity to the brink".

After Boris Johnson, climate activists from vulnerable parts of the world, including one from the Amazon, have been speaking.

Txai Surui is only 24 but says her people have been living there for 6,000 years. Her father, she says, told her to listen to the stars, moon, animals and trees.

She says now the climate is warming, animals are disappearing and the plants don’t flower like before.

"The Earth is speaking: she tells us we have no more time," she says.

Climate change impacts are happening now, not in 2030 or 2050, she says. While politicians closed their eyes to climate change, her friend was murdered for protecting the forest, she adds.

Some of you may have noticed that Boris Johnson has quoted campaigner Greta Thunberg as part of his speech.

The prime minister said that all the promises of previous summits in Copenhagen and Paris would be "nothing but blah blah blah" unless the leaders got real on climate change in Glasgow.

Thunberg previously used the phrase to mock the ''empty words and promises'' of world leaders.

One of our correspondents in Glasgow, Chris Morris, says it must be frustrating to hear politicians like Johnson echoing their words - but at the same time it shows they are being listened to.

Image source, Reuters

Boris Johnson says that "we have the technology and can find the finance" but says that the question today is "whether we have the will".

He says that while politicians talk about what they are going to do in 2050 or 2060 the average age of COP delegates is over 60 and he says the children who will judge us are not yet born.

"We mustn't fluff our lines or miss our cue because if we fail they will not forgive us, they will know that Glasgow was the historic turning point when history failed to turn," he says.

"They will judge us with bitterness and a resentment that eclipses any of the climate activists of today and they will be right. COP26 cannot be the end of the story on climate change."

Boris Johnson says that the "anger and the impatience of the world" will be uncontainable "unless we make this COP26 in Glasgow the moment that we get real about climate change".

He says that we have the technology to deactivate "that ticking doomsday device", although he says we cannot do everything "at once".

Johnson goes on to say that the developed world must "recognise the special responsibility we have to help everybody else" to make the move to greener economies.

Helen Briggs
Environment Correspondent in Glasgow

There’s was a huge sense of anticipation and drama in the blue zone of the conference as Boris Johnson got up to speak.

Despite the scramble to get inside - with many spending more than an hour in the queue - the venue’s now buzzing.

In the press room, the great and the good in broadcasting have been rushing back and forth, as crews scrambled to get into position.

Finally, the world leaders are here and set to take the stage, with journalists poised to analyse every word.

Boris Johnson begins by welcoming everybody to COP and Glasgow.

He makes the comparison between world leaders and James Bond, saying that the spy often ends his films fighting to stop a force from ending the world.

"The tragedy is that this is not a movie and the doomsday device is real," he says.

He says that two degrees more to global temperatures will jeopardise food supplies, three degrees more will bring more wildfires and cyclones, while four degrees and "we say goodbye to whole cities".

"The longer we fail to act the worse it gets and the higher the price when we are eventually forced by catastrophe to act," he says.

After a short video from Prof Brian Cox and a poem from Yrsa Daley Ward, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has begun addressing world leaders and delegates at the climate summit.

Stick with us for what he says, as well as more updates from the opening ceremony.

And with the sound of the bagpipes the opening ceremony of the COP26 summit begins in Glasgow.

Skye native Brìghde Chaimbeul, 22, is performing an arrangement of traditional melodies ahead of Boris Johnson's speech.

You can watch live on the BBC News Channel by clicking the play button at the top of this page.

We've just seen US President Joe Biden arriving at the COP26 venue in Glasgow, after flying from the G20 summit in Rome via Edinburgh Airport.

He travelled between Scotland's two biggest cities in a motorcade.

As he arrived, he was pictured greeting UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and UN Secretary-General António Guterres.

Image source, PA Media

Also pictured arriving at the summit were the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall.

Image source, PA Media

Biden to issue 'clarion call' on climate changepublished at 12:19 Greenwich Mean Time 1 November 2021

12:19 GMT 1 November 2021

Anthony Zurcher
BBC North America reporter

During his presidential campaign, Joe Biden said he was going to make climate change a top priority for his administration.

On his first day in office, he gave notice that the US was rejoining the Paris climate accords.

He's just touched down in Glasgow with a delegation that includes eight cabinet officials, climate envoy John Kerry and a gaggle of other top advisers.

In Rome, the Biden team said it hoped the just-concluded G20 summit there would generate momentum for substantive action in Glasgow. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told us on Air Force One that the general agreement to limit global warming to 1.5C set a good foundation for COP26.

"We should not look at Glasgow as the end of the road," he said, rather as "a key moment setting us off on a decisive decade of climate action".

Sullivan offered a preview of Biden’s address to COP26 today, saying the president would issue a "clarion call", promising US action and leadership.

Of course, Biden arrives in Glasgow with his domestic climate agenda yet to be passed by a Congress controlled by his own party.

Sullivan told me the world’s leaders were sophisticated enough to understand the legislative process took time.

"I don’t think it has stood in the way of the president being able to look the whole world in the eye and say that the US is doing its part," he said.

Image source, Getty Images

We are due to hear the opening speeches from world leaders including Boris Johnson and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi.

The UK is hosting this conference in Glasgow, but Italy are the official co-hosts.

Prince Charles and natural historian Sir David Attenborough will also speak shortly as COP26 fully swings into action.

Later this afternoon, leaders from all around the world (with a few major exceptions) will stand up and announce their climate commitments.

We are currently on track for 2.7C of warming by the end of the century, according to the UN, which says such a situation would lead to "climate catastrophe". This summit is about getting as many new commitments as possible to try and limit warming to 1.5C.

We will be bringing you all the latest right here.

We've been exploring what life is like in parts of the world where climate change is making temperatures more extreme.

This summer, Iraq saw 26 days when temperatures were over 50C. Standing on black asphalt in the capital, Baghdad, traffic police sergeant Sa’d Saddam Abdulhasan must keep the city moving at one of its busiest junctions in punishing heat.

And outside the city, Sheikh Kazem is fighting to continue farming his ancestral land despite worsening water shortages.

"I'm just face-to-face with this empty land," he says.

Both host and hostage to fortunepublished at 11:53 Greenwich Mean Time 1 November 2021

11:53 GMT 1 November 2021

Adam Fleming
Chief political correspondent

A government that volunteers to stage a COP climate conference makes itself a massive hostage to fortune.

That’s because the UN-sponsored process is based on finding consensus among the 197 parties - it’s not just a product of the host’s clever diplomacy or ability to ram through a deal at the last minute.

Which means Boris Johnson is at the mercy of what his guests come up with at the end of it - breakthrough or bust up? Maybe that’s why he’s lately been trying to reset expectations of what can be achieved here.

And why the UK is lining up a series of deals that can be announced on the side lines - early wins, even though they’re not strictly speaking part of the formal COP process.

The host nation also opens itself up to greater scrutiny, which is why the prime minister faces tough questions about cutting the tax on domestic flights or the prospect of a new coal mine opening in the UK.

Working out the legacy of a COP is difficult, too. In 2009 Denmark was blamed for a logistical and political fiasco at Copenhagen, but history is gradually being kinder because it laid the groundwork for a vastly more successful meeting in Paris in 2015.